What exactly does a web developer do?

This seems like such an obvious question, but since businesses spend tens of thousands of dollars on websites and digital marketing, it’s an important one to have a very clear answer for. When you ask a web development agency to build a website for you, what are you asking them to do? 

Register a domain

One of the first things a web development company will do when they are building a website for you is to register your domain. 

This is done through a domain registrar such as namecheap.com, enom.com, and many others. As a business owner, you obviously can register your own domain, but many people want to leave all the technical bits to the web developers. 

If you already have a domain your web developer can work with that and does not need to register a new one—unless, of course, you somehow lost access to your domain.

Pro Tip: Make sure you own your domain name once it’s registered. It must be registered to you or to your business. The web developer can be listed as the technical contact but you are the ‘registrant.’

Design the website 

The design part of the project deals with how the website will look. It looks at the user interface, colors, fonts, buttons, and other design elements. 

It’s not just about making a website look pretty, a really big part of this process is making sure that the website is easy and intuitive to use. 

Develop the website

The development bit looks at all the bits that make the site actually work. You want a shopping cart? That has to be coded. You want the site to work in a certain way on mobile devices? That has to be coded. 

These days, many developers will start with a pre-built content management system such as WordPress, and then customize it to suit a client’s needs. This reduces the amount of coding work for most sites to zero. It also makes it possible to offer complex websites without charging hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Host your website

If a web developer does not host the website themselves, they will often organize to host it with another hosting service provider. 

When a developer hands over a website to you, it needs to be actually live and the only way this can happen is if all the website files and databases are sitting on a server somewhere. This is called hosting and it makes it possible for your website to be accessible online. 

It’s important that your website is hosted with a secure and fast service to ensure that it is available when people try and visit it.

Link your website to social media

It’s commonly understood today that people will interact with a business on the platform that is comfortable for them. Most websites cater for this by having links to their profiles on different social media platforms. 

Your web developer will create these links on your website. Some developers also offer social media services where they can create, manage and optimize social media profiles for their clients.

Other developers hand this work on to dedicated social media marketing firms.

Link your website to other business applications

Say you’re a doctor’s office and have a patient portal where they can access their medical records, your web developer, without needing access to the portal, can create a link to it from the website to give your patients easy access.

If you have a billing platform that is totally separate from your patient portal, that can have a link from your website too. 

This helps to create one central location where your patients/clients can access all your online platforms.

Optimize your website for security

One of the critical operations a web developer carries out is to make sure that your website is as secure as possible. This starts with basic things like making sure there is an active SSL certificate so that your site transmits and receives information more securely. It includes a range of other activities such as implementing firewalls, using a content delivery network to prevent brute force attacks, automating backups, and providing training to whoever will access the website backend on the best security protocols.

Optimize your website for speed

Website visitors will leave a website that does not load quickly. Your website needs to be optimized for speed on desktop and mobile devices. 

Optimize your website for search engines

Once your website is complete, it does not help anyone if it does not receive any traffic. Search engine optimization (SEO) ensures that your site comes up in search results on Google (and other search engines) when people type in specific keywords. 

SEO is an ongoing activity and a robust SEO strategy will include regular checks on things like the speed of your website, who is linking to your site (backlinks), what keywords your website is ranking for, what keywords your competition is ranking for, etc.

Generate content for your website

Some digital media agencies will offer copywriting and photography services to help their clients develop content. Other agencies will work with dedicated photographers or copywriters. And sometimes clients will opt to generate their own content to reduce costs or to make use of internal resources. Even if the content is generated by the client, it helps to have a good copywriter look at it before it goes live.

Manage the website on an ongoing basis

When your developer hands you a completed website, that is the end of one part of the digital marketing journey. The real work is in the ongoing updating, tweaking, and optimization of the website. This includes adding new content, editing outdated content, updating plugins, updating server software, etc.

Keeping you up to date

This is one of the significant roles a web developer has; letting you know how your website is doing and giving you advice to help you optimize your online presence. A full-service digital agency will look at your whole online strategy. This includes your website, social media, email marketing, content marketing, etc. They will give advice on how to optimize all your online channels to help you achieve your business goals.